1 Thessalonians 5:6

To be alert, in one's sober senses (νήφειν), is more than to be merely awake. Here, as in 1 Thessalonians 5:8, the Christians are summoned to live up to their privileges and position towards the Lord. “There are few of us who are not rather ashamed of our sins and follies as we look out on the blessed morning sunlight, which comes to us like a bright-winged angel beckoning us to quit the old path of vanity that stretches its dreary length behind us” (George Eliot). In one of the Zoroastrian scriptures (Vendidad, xviii. 23 25) the cock, as the bird of the dawn, is inspired to cry, “Arise, O men!… Lo here is Bushyasta coming down upon you, who lulls to sleep again the whole living world as soon as it has awoke, saying, ‘Sleep, sleep on, O man [and live in sin, Yasht, xxii. 41]! The time is not yet come.' ”